Metal Detectors and the New Age...

If you're a guy like me, you often have a small knife in your pocket.  Not a big fixed-blade number, but just a small folding knife, useful for opening packages and letters, cutting string, and whatever! Some are Swiss army type knives, useful for the occasionally needed screwdriver or nail implement.  My best knives I keep at home, carrying only those that wouldn't be devastating to lose.

In an era of terrorists, plane hijackers, and kids shooting other kids in schools, metal detectors are everywhere.  I once had to pass through a metal detector to enter a science museum!  What am I gonna do...take hostages by the exhibits?!  Anyways, my unexpected pass through a metal detector set off the alarm due to the presence of a small pocket knife, an embarrassing and disconcerting experience.  The offending knife had to be surrendered until I was leaving the building.  Another time I had to pass through a metal detector to enter a courthouse, but knew better than to be carrying a pocket knife.  This time my belt buckle set off the alarm!  Thank God they found the offensive object before I had to undergo a body search.  It felt peculiar enough to have to remove the belt prior to being allowed to venture further, then put it back on after successfully passing the screening; I felt like the criminally accused.  Belts I had thought were put on when one put on pants, and kept on until the pants came off.

All of this drove home to me the thought that times have changed considerably since I was a kid, and one could pass unchallenged into schools and public buildings without going through metal detector screenings or passing through electronically secured doors.  We are all less free because we live in scary and uncertain times...